“Would you like to speak that name? Don't you think that in her present state, she'd like to hear someone call her by name?”
“When she be in her right mind she don't want me to,” said Denmark.
“Slavery makes people do strange things,” said Margaret.
“I never was a slave,” said Denmark.
“You were, all the same,” said Margaret. “They fenced you around with so many laws. Who is more a slave than the man who has to pretend he's a slave to survive?”
“That didn't make me do that to her.”
“I don't know,” said Margaret. “Of course you made your own choices. You tried to find a wife in just the way your father did– you bought one. Then you found yourself in a corner. You thought murder was your only hope. But at the last moment you couldn't do it.”
“Not the last moment,” said Denmark. “The moment after.”
“Yes,” said Margaret. “Almost too late.”
“Now I live with her every day,” said Denmark. “Now who own who?”
“All that anger outside– what if they kill? Do you think they're murderers?”
“You think they not?” asked Denmark.
“There has to be something between murder and innocence. I've seen the darkest places in everyone's heartfire, Denmark. There's no one who doesn't have memories he wishes he didn't have. And there are crimes that arise from– from decent desires gone wrong, from justified passions carried too far. Crimes that began only as mistakes. I've learned never to judge people. Of course I judge whether they're dangerous or not, or whether they did right or wrong, how can anyone live without judging? What I mean is, I can't condemn them. A few, yes, a few who love the suffering of others, or who never think of others at all, worthless souls that exist only to satisfy themselves. But those are rare. Do you even know what I'm talking about?”
“I know you scared,” said Denmark. “You talk when you scared.”
“We're safe enough here,” said Margaret. “I'm just… what you did to your wife, Denmark. Do you think I haven't thought of doing that to someone? An enemy? Someone who I know will someday cause the death of the person I love most, the person I've loved my whole life, from childhood up. I know that desperate feeling. You have to stop him. And then you see the chance. He's helpless. All you have to do is let nature take its course, and he's gone.”
“But you call your husband,” said Denmark. “You wave your arms and make letters in the air. Somehow he see that.”
“So I chose to do the right thing,” she said.
“Like me,” said Denmark.
“But maybe I chose too late,” she said.
Denmark shrugged.
“Maybe. It ain't all work out yet.”
“All these people thirsting for vengeance. What will they choose? When will it be too late for them? Or just in time?”
A new sound. Marching feet. Margaret ran to the window. The King's Guard, marching in Blacktown.
“Damn fool they,” said Gullah Joe. “What we do here in Blacktown? Who we hurt? They scared of us, they no remember they gots them Black people hate them, in they house, they wait down the stair, White man sleep, up the stair they go, cook she got she knife, gardener he got he sickle, butler he break him wine bottle, he got the glass, the edge be sharp. When they blood paint the walls, when they body empty, who the Black man put on that tall hat? Who the Black woman wear the bloody dress?”
The images were too terrible for Margaret to bear. She had already seen them herself, in the blazing heartfires of angry slaves. What Gullah Joe imagined, she had seen down ten thousand paths into the future. Until Calvin tore up the name-strings, that future hadn't shown up anywhere. She couldn't predict it. Calvin had the power to change everything without warning. Margaret was unaccustomed to surprise. She didn't know how to deal with a situation that she hadn't had time to watch and think about.
She walked away, into a corner of the room. She began to pray.
But she couldn't keep her mind on the words of her prayer. She kept thinking of Calvin. As if she didn't have enough to worry about. Wasn't it just like Cal? Set loose forces that could cause the deaths of thousands of people, and he was going to lie there dying through it all.
As for Gullah Joe and Denmark, she hadn't the heart to tell them, but the likeliest future, whether the slave revolt happened or not, was that the King and his men would be looking for the person who planned the revolt. It had to be a conspiracy. It couldn't be mere chance that in the morning the entire slave population of Camelot was docile, and suddenly by nightfall they were keening and howling in every house. There had to be a plot. There had to be a signal given. It wasn't hard to find slaves who, under torture, would mention the taker of names. And others who would point him out. The mastermind of the conspiracy, that's what they'd call him. They'd call it Denmark Vesey's War, as if it was war to have families murdered in their sleep, and then every third slave in Camelot hanged in retribution, while Denmark Vesey himself would be drawn and quartered, and the pieces of him hung on poles in Blacktown, lest anyone forget.
She hadn't the heart to tell him that. Nor did it matter, in the end, for one thing was certain in Denmark's heartfire: If this happened to him, he would believe that he deserved it, for the sake of what he did to his woman.
Calvin. Again he kept intruding in her thoughts. Something about Calvin. What? He can't heal himself, so what is he good for?
For something that he does know how to do.
Margaret got up from her prayer and rushed to Gullah Joe. “You've done this before, Gullah Joe. I've heard the stories, I've seen them in the slaves' memories, legends of the zombi, the walking dead.”
“I no do that,” said Gullah Joe.
“I know, you don't do it on purpose, but there he is, dead but alive. There must be something you have, something in your tools, your powders, that can wake him up. Just for a little while.”
“Wake him up, then he die faster,” said Gullah Joe.
“I need him. To save the people he did this to.”
“He no heal him own body,” said Gullah Joe scornfully.
“Because he doesn't know how. But he can do something.”
Gullah Joe got up and went to his jars. Soon he had a mixture– a dangerous one, to judge from the way he never let any of the powders touch his skin and looked away when mixing so as not to breathe in any of the dust. When it was mixed, he poured it through a hole in a small bellows, then plugged the hole tightly. Even at that, he wetted down cloths for the rest of them to breathe through, in case any dust got loose in the air.
Then he took the bellows, put the end in one of Calvin's nostrils, then waxed the other nostril closed. “You,” he said to Denmark. “Hold him mouth closed.”
“No,” said Denmark. “I can't do that. That too much like drowning him.”
“I'll do it,” said Margaret.
“What you tell husband then, this go bad?”
“It's my fault anyway,” said Margaret. “I told you to do it.”
“I do it, ma'am,” said Fishy. “I do this.”
Margaret stepped back. Fishy got one hand under Calvin's jaw and the other atop his head.
“I say go, you close him tight the mouth,” said Gullah Joe.
Fishy nodded.
“Go.”
She clamped Calvin's mouth shut. Calvin feebly resisted, desperate for breath. Nothing came in except a thin stream of air around the nipple of the bellows. Gullah Joe slammed the bellows together just as Calvin inhaled desperately. A cloud of dust emerged from around the bellows. Gullah Joe was ready for it. He picked up a bucket of water and doused Calvin with it, catching and settling the dust at the same time.
Calvin jerked and twitched violently. Then he sat up, pulling away from Fishy's grip, tearing the bellows and the wax out of his nostrils. Then he choked and coughed, trying to clear his lungs.